UNIDO/FAO and STDF support economic recovery in Sudan

On 14 September 2020, UNIDO and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), organized in Khartoum the Third Project Steering Committee Meeting, with the participation of key national counterparts such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Sudanese Standards and Metrology Organization (SSMO), and the Agriculture Research Cooperation (ARC). During the meeting, the Vice Minister for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Abdel Gadier Turkawi expressed his appreciation to efforts of the FAO, UNIDO and Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) to aid economic recovery and maintaining export flows throughout the project. He stressed that Sudan would use the project as a model to improve all aspects of its agricultural industry, in the hope that the country can meet the demands of the international markets, and so increase revenue.

The COVID-19 pandemic has gone much beyond a public health risks but creates numerous challenges to economic development in Sudan, as the country is heavily relying on limited tradable products such as gold, sesame, livestock and oil products to drive its industrial and trade development.

UNIDO project “Upgrading the Sudanese Sesame Seeds Value Chain”, funded by STDF and jointly implemented by UNIDO and FAO, aims to increase the revenue of the sesame seeds value chain beneficiaries through strengthening production and trade capacity of sesame farmers, producers, processors and exporters in Sudan, by focusing on two main sesame seed growing regions, Al Qadarif and North Kordofan. Since the launch of the project, UNIDO hand in hand with FAO, has been supporting local value chain actors and government agencies in their efforts to implement good production practices, reduce post-harvest losses, and increase value addition. In addition, the project has also supported metrology and testing laboratories to enhance their capacities for better serving the needs of sesame value chain actors  to meet sanitary and phytosanitary requirements of importing countries and gain access to international markets.

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For more information, please contact Cong Wu (C.Wu [at] unido.org (C[dot]Wu[at]unido[dot]org)).